
Always make sure you have maxed out your chief gear and hero gear as much as you can, as well as investing in your primary attacking heros skills.The reason for this is that you get a higher % buff per talent point that you spend, as you move further down the talent tree.
When speccing into your talent tree, get as far down as you can before going back to invest your points (for me this is 16 places along, where the only options are 10 points into 'guns blazing' or 'close combat', then I will backtrack and fill in the talents I passed - however, I will sometimes take the 20 point loss on troops to put my remaining 5 into the march capacity buff for an extra 1.5k march). Only pick up the bare minimum talents for infantry to progress down the tree. Always be specced into your chief talent 'war' tree and focus on maximising talents that increase attack first, then lethality second, of your riders and hunters (attack has a greater influence on base damage output, lethality appears to be more relevant for attacking other players). Attack with full rider and hunter army (no infantry, even if you have to fill the space with lower-level troops). You want to rally under the guy with the best chief gear (primarily) and best stats. The damage you put out is not just dependent upon your hero gear, chief gear, hero talents and chief talents, but also upon the rally leader. A late reply, but here it is all the same.